


We Are Alone in This Together

by Adagio



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Gen, M/M, Unrequited Love, probably sorta dark, this is what I'm calling a real love/hate relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 11:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6517132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adagio/pseuds/Adagio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe flipped the last switch on his cockpit to finish the pre-flight check. He felt detached, mechanical. The truth was too surreal, it hung just past his ability to grasp, grotesque. The man he'd hated for eight years for slaughtering the first boy he'd ever loved, the man who'd personally executed untold unsung heroes and ordered the deaths of thousands more, the man that embodied everything the Resistance stood against—that man WAS the first boy he'd ever loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Alone in This Together

**Author's Note:**

> So obviously Ben and Poe knew each other as kids. But then, on Jakku, Poe tries to shoot Ben. So I thought about that and my thoughts got angsty and then this fic happened. I guess it's sorta dark and sad and unredeemed even though there's like 1% fluff and lots of Leia Organa because why not.
> 
> I was told titles must always come from angsty song lyrics. This one is from Morton's Fork, by Typhoon.

It's not Ben.

That's what Poe repeats to himself, as he uses his blaster sight to follow the shadow of a man against the stars. He aims for the chest. For a stormtrooper the head is a safer bet, but there's no telling what the bastard's black mask might do to a blaster bolt. It probably has a few more tricks than those white buckets. The flames illuminate his robes, Poe can see the shape of his chest, there's no blast armor, just cloth, then flesh. It'll burn. The blaster shakes in Poe's hands, he doesn't even have a clean shot. There's a tatter of tent in the way. He tries to breathe deep and steady, force calm into his limbs.

Poe sees the glint of the lightsaber hilt, he knows what's coming, he needs to shoot. Now. The old man, Lor San Tekka, knows what's coming too, he knew the moment BB8 rolled into the hut to warn them. It's why he told Poe to run. Poe wishes he had, wishes he could.

It's not Ben.

He repeats it in his head with each breath as he tries to steady himself. The blaster is unwieldy, unnatural, there's a wind off the desert, dust in his eyes. Shit. He's better than this. He feels exposed, even crouched against the stone, even with tattered tents and rubble between him and that shadow of a man standing over Tekka. Shoot. Shoot now.

The open air is so vast—ten trillion stars leaning in with no durasteel between Poe and the void. The deep breaths aren't working. He can't keep the blaster on target. The bastard keeps pacing and the tent is fluttering and Poe can't keep the damn sight from trembling in his hands. 

It's not Ben.

Poe switches tactics. He focuses on what it sounds like to hear atmosphere rushing across the titanium coated plates of his X-Wing. The bleeding, flaring quality of stars when seen through tempered glass. The chemical taste of his own breath filtered back through the cockpit vents to squeeze out every bead of oxygen. Finally, mercifully, his blaster begins to track steady with the shadow's chest. But now that he's calmed his mind, it traverses hyperspace of its own accord, supplying memories forgotten or suppressed, old expressions of elation and fear. It's not Ben.

"–no. It's not—not Ben." This was his own voice, six, maybe seven, years ago. He sat in the cockpit of his X-Wing in the hangar on D’Qar, completing his pre-flight check. A yellow boarding ladder was still pushed up beside his cockpit and General Organa perched there, her forearms rested on the top stair. Her face was crumpled, admitting the weight of all the secrets she tucked behind her words. She had just told Poe what she should have told him the moment she knew. 

It was easy, even then, to picture that figure he'd glimpsed in black robes on the grainy print frame of a holo vid gleaned on a mission where only half the operatives returned. Kylo Ren. Poe had pictured him a thousand times. Imagined what he looked like beneath that black mask, face disfigured, grotesque, formed to suit the wretchedness of his actions. And Poe had pictured what it would look like, let himself wonder what it would feel like, to kill him. When the red flare of grief was sharp in his eyes with the glint of some lost joy of boyhood, he'd find himself longing to gun Ren down with his X-Wing, see his black robes charred to ash by laser cannons. He tried not to think such things. Poe wasn't—isn't—a violent man, he doesn't delight in killing. He always did what he had to for the New Republic, would do whatever it took for the Resistance, not because he liked to fight, but because he hoped one day no one would need to. Yet sometimes in the dead of night he awoke afraid of himself, afraid of his unconscious mind supplying a fantasy of what it might feel like to drive a vibroblade into Ren's gut and watch him bleed out. Because Kylo Ren was a murder, a psychopath; in his first act of galactic terror he’d cut down a boy with a shit-eating grin that Poe had loved even more than he loved flying. What the General had just told him was beyond impossible, it defied any logic, any physics. 

"It's him, Poe, I'm sorry," said General Organa. She'd known. She'd always known and she told Poe a lie, told him Ben was dead, let him grieve a lie. 

"Fuck." It just came out, it was all he knew how to say. He didn't even have the decency to apologize to the General for such disrespect. So he just said it again. "Fuck." He meant it to be louder, angrier, but it was more of a whimper. His shoulders collapsed, crushed his ribs, his heart consumed itself in a black hole in his chest—his heart pumped backwards, drained every drop of blood out of his body into oblivion.

"Who knew?" He managed to croak. "How many people know?"

General Organa swallowed and Poe struggled to decipher her expression until he realized it was shame. "A handful initially, friends, a few senators, now most of the commanders here, everyone that’s been in the fight longest and—and your father.”

Poe held his helmet in his lap, wondered how much force it would take to crush it. He wanted to crush it. All he felt in each breath was rage. It took him a few moments to even consciously pinpoint who, or what, he was angry at.

"You were just a kid," the General said. “And you and Ben were so close. You followed each other everywhere. We were afraid—"

Again, it took Poe too long to comprehend. When he did his heart started beating properly again, his hands relaxed and he was ashamed, for a moment, then felt nothing but grief and a sweet sad fondness for a lanky boy squatting beside him beneath the trees on Yavin IV. "You were afraid I could be like him," said Poe. "You were afraid I might follow him." Icy fear swept over his chest for a breath until he stamped out the possibility.

"We were fools," said the General, "when I look back now, when I see your career. We’re lucky to have you here with us, Dameron. I should have told you the truth sooner, I just didn’t want to be the one that had to do it.”

Around them the hangar had nearly emptied, the last X-Wings taxied out. It was only a recon mission. Except for the first time in years Poe wasn’t flying his T-85 with Rapier Squadron for New Republic Starfleet. He’d defected. He was going to fly a beat up T-70 for the Resistance, for General Organa and her cash strapped unsanctioned defense corp. He’d all but given the finger to his out-of-touch commanders and gone to fight the real fight. Only now she was telling him it wasn’t just a fight against Snoke and his lackeys—it was a fight against Ben. 

"I know how you felt about him. Hell I think he knew too. You've never been subtle," the General had this sad smile on her face. 

Poe had seen that smile before, on the rare occasions she showed up defiant before the New Republic, trying to convince them the fight wasn’t over. It was the only sort of smile he’d ever seen on her face since Ben had died—no—since Ben had—

“There’s gonna be some tough moments out there,” the smile was gone and she’d pushed her shoulders back, “tough calls. Hopefully not today. But you’ve been flying long enough. You know they’ll come. And I can’t send you out there under my command without you knowing the truth.” 

Poe flipped the last switch on his cockpit to finish the pre-flight check. He felt detached, mechanical. The truth was too surreal, it hung just past his ability to grasp, grotesque. The man he'd hated for eight years for slaughtering the first boy he'd ever loved, the man who'd personally executed untold unsung heroes and ordered the deaths of thousands more, the man that embodied everything the Resistance stood against—that man _was_ the first boy he'd ever loved. 

Nausea swelled in Poe. He beat it down, but no less than twelve hours later when the mission was complete and he was alone in his bunk, his stomach heaved out bile until there was nothing but cracked breath and pain.

General Organa was looking at him, there were tears in her eyes.

"Would you do it?" He found himself asking, against all decorum, all respect, all better judgement. "If you had the chance, if it meant saving everyone else… would you kill him?"

The General closed her eyes. "There's still light in him, I can feel it."

"He's a fucking murderer." Poe regretted saying it immediately.

The General pursed her lips and began to descend the yellow flight stairs. But Poe reached out and caught her arm. 

"I'm sorry, General," he said. "That was out of line," he tried to shake the rage creeping back in his vision. He needed to get a grip. How could he imagine what she'd gone through. Ben was her goddamn son. "I just don’t understand—I don’t know—I can’t.”

General Organa nodded and finished climbing down. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She pulled away the boarding ladder and his cockpit hissed shut. 

They never spoke of it again. She did what she did best and led the Resistance through hell and back, again and again. Poe reported without hesitation for every mission, no matter how far, no matter how dangerous. He was never sure exactly when he realized he wasn't just fighting for the Resistance, he was fighting for Leia Organa. 

He almost said something, countless times. He composed angry rants about how she had kept it from him, he composed apologizes for those rants, for his language, for not doing enough to save Ben. Once in the middle of the night he woke from a nightmare. In it, he walked through the rain with Ben, only there were dead Jedi all around them and one of the bodies looked at Poe and asked "how could you?" and Poe realized the lightsaber was in his hand and Ben's face morphed into the disfigured one he'd always imagined Kylo Ren would have. Kylo Ren was smiling at him, smiling at Poe.

Honest to God, Poe crawled sweat drenched out of bed and made it halfway across the base in a stained t-shirt and boxers because he was going wake the General. Because she was the only one he could talk to, the only one in the galaxy that might begin to understand what it felt like to love—to love—

But she was his General, not his mother, not his friend. He went back to his bunk and sat awake trying to cry, until the dawn found him dry eyed and hollow. That was the first time after she told him the truth that he said to himself: it's not Ben.

He rehearsed it, built on it for years. What made Ben himself? His smile? His love of trees and climbing? His hopes, dreams, fears? His passion for justice and peace? It was all gone, paved over with black matte durasteel. What was a person? His body? His cells? Every seven years every cell in the body replaced itself. Not even the matter that was once Ben Organa Solo existed anymore. Kylo Ren wasn’t Ben, not anymore than Poe was the snot nosed kid stupid enough to fall in love with him. That Ben was snuffed out, just like Poe will be one day, hopefully in a fiery blaze of an X-Wing taking a whole Star Destroyer with him. 

It's not Ben, and Poe Dameron is not going to die in some god forsaken desert junkyard when the General is counting on him to complete a mission.

Poe's finger is steady on the trigger, he'll need to stand and move forward. But he has a shot and he's going to take it. Ben Organa Solo is dead and this piece of shit Kylo Ren deserves to die for his crimes. It's a hell of a moment in the history of the Galaxy, a moment to just shoot the damn gun.

The lightsaber hums and slashes and Lor San Tekka collapses and Poe finds that he's still crouched against the rock. He hasn't taken the shot and the old man is dead. 

The vastness of the desert and the stars yawns around Poe and he feels dizzy and he looses track of his breathing again. There's something sharp burrowing through his forehead and the air seems too heavy to breathe and the pain is in his chest and he can barely hold on to the blaster. He turns around, braces his back against the rock. 

In the moment Poe thinks the universe is going to crush him there's this breath. Only it isn't in the air, it's somewhere behind where the pain is blossoming from in his chest. He hears something that he knows is inaudible and yet he hears it. There aren't words, there aren't images, there isn't anything. Except there's everything. There's ten trillion stars and the desert wind and the heat of flames and the clatter of stormtroopers and—Ben. Poe swears on his mother's grave he hears the voice of General Organa. Not in a memory, not in a vision, there with him on Jakku. All she says is, I'm sorry.

It's Ben. Poe accepts it like he accepts that suns give light. Ben killed Lor San Tekka, all those Jedi padawans, all of the wingmen and friends that Poe has lost in this fight. Ben killed them. Ben. Too long limbs that made him seem twice as tall as Poe even though he was the younger one. Smile like a Bespin sunrise. Hair falling in his eyes. Of course Poe fell in love. Who wouldn't? Hours traipsing through the trees on Yavin IV while their parents talked, poking at lizards and using sticks for blasters and daring each other to eat a handful of weird berries just to see what might happen. Puking up their guts. Suffering the scolding. Laughing, in the sunshine, on the grassy hill of some new planet; seeking each other out while their parents crisscrossed the galaxy in different directions for the sake of something called Peace, Order, Hope. 

It's Ben, standing there with that crackling red lightsaber, all wrapped in darkness. 

Poe can feel tears in his eyes, or maybe it's the blood. He turns back around, sees the body of the old man at the feet of that shadow. At Ben's feet. His aim is steady as stone, his heart is beating faster than he can flip an X-Wing and he has complete control of his breathing.

It's Ben and he has to shoot him. Hell he has to shoot him because it's Ben. There's still that inexplicable breath somewhere behind his heart but the voice of the General is long gone. There is however, the memory of a boy with a voice like hers. 

Poe didn't just fall in love with Ben for his too wide smile. That kid believed in something. Justice. Peace for the Galaxy. "Sometimes we have to make sacrifices," Ben said once, sitting beneath that tree on Yavin IV in the twilight.

"Is that what your parents say?" Poe asked. They were arguing. Ben was going to leave, he was going to become a Jedi.

"No, well—okay yeah they say crap like that sometimes. But," Ben smiled, it was intoxicating, "this isn't just about them or me. It never has been. For any Jedi. You have to give things up. You have to let the Force—"

"Be the Force?" Poe sighed. It was the usual bullshit. Just like his father’s.

"I don't know," Ben hung his head and his hair fell in his eyes. He scratched at the back of his neck. "I guess, all I'm saying is the universe is so vast, and you and I—we're small. And you have to take a deep breath and see all the stars and remember how small you are on one tiny little planet. And when you start to comprehend that, when you start to let go of yourself—" a pair of rocks began to rise in the air towards Ben's outstretched hands. They hovered there, holding somehow the end of Ben's sentence but Poe didn’t get it. Poe swatted the stones out of the air and Ben startled, as if woken out of a trance.

"Ben—I—I—" he was going to tell him, Poe was going to tell him. It was his last card to play, the only way to keep him. He had to tell Ben how he felt before he left.

But Ben stood up in a huff, brushed himself off. "I don't care Dameron."

"What?"

"I don't know why I bother with you, you never listen."

"Wait—Ben!"

"I've gotta go," Ben turned his back. "I'll send you a holo or something."

Poe went back to that tree a lot, sitting, staring at those stones, trying to understand what it was he missed. What Ben had been trying to tell him. He never did figure it out.

But in the dust of Jakku, Poe understands something. He pushes himself up and levels the blaster. Whatever it is he understands is a gift, pouring down from those ten trillion stars. He's got a clean shot and he can't stop to think about it. It's Ben and he loves him and he's always loved him. And he's not shooting because he's angry or because he hates. He doesn't want to shoot, it hurts, but he has to, because the Universe is bigger than Poe Dameron and its holding its breath.

Poe aims for Ben's chest, moves forward, fires. There are tears in his eyes when he pulls the trigger.

But his certainty hits an implacable force as surely as his blaster bolt and the desert wind comes gushing into his ears. He can't move. Kylo Ren's hand is outstretched and the blaster bolt cracks and sputters, caught in midair.

Poe should have known better. After all, it's Ben.


End file.
